This is a game I wish I'd liked more than I did.

At its heart it's an ensemble cast RPG Maker adventure game like Mousebusters and Bear's Restaurant. The addition of fishing is pretty cute, but it has the effect of padding the total length out much longer than those two games... without adding much more story. The result is that many of the side stories only have about as much characterization as those games, but it's stretched thin over a much longer period of gameplay time. It also makes the characterization a bit more explicitly transactional than in their previous games; it feels weird to have a story about becoming genuine friends with people, but only because you fulfilled their requests to give them literally dozens of specific fish over the course of the game.

None of the side stories are especially deep this time around, but I appreciated that Dave gets some much-needed characterization that makes him more than the cheap joke he was in Bear's Restaurant. The South American native character is a crude stereotype though, something that feels really out of character for a studio that's usually done a good job of treating its international casts with respect.

The fishing gameplay is a bit shallow but pretty cute. However, this is the first time Odencat experimented with free to play monetization and it felt wrong. Players can pay to play without ads, like in their previous games. Even if you do, though, you still get prompted frequently to watch an ad in order to increase the amount of in-game currency you earn. It's distracting, and makes you feel as though if you pay to remove ads but don't use that system, you're going to fall behind in the level curve. It's a really weird experience for what's meant to be a relaxing game.

Pretty sweet little game. Given the horror framing I wasn't expecting the side stories to focus on heartwarming plots like Bear's Restaurant.

Like a lot of Odencat's games, I feel like the focus on the ensemble cast means no one gets quite the amount of characterization they need for their personal stories to be fully developed. Between this, Bear's Restaurant, and Fishing Paradiso, I'm also starting to feel like there's an uncomfortable pattern with how young women get treated. Women being shallow and into fashion is a bit too much of a recurring trope. I don't think it's intended to be mean-spirited but it comes across that way anyway.

A bit unbalanced but a lot of fun.

I love single-screen platformers, but you don't really get those outside of retro throwbacks these days. This is definitely a retro throwback, but it's a good one.

I played the coop campaign, which I found out later is apparently significantly harder than the single-player campaign. It has different level designs and puzzles that require both players to complete.

The difficulty curve is a bit all over the place; sometimes hard levels are followed immediately by incongruously easy ones, and I found the first boss to be many times harder than the much more fun to fight second boss. Once I unlocked the unlimited retry option the difficulty felt a lot more manageable though, and coordinating with a local player to solve some of the toughest puzzles was really satisfying.

CD-i LIVES FOREVER

Man, what a gem. This is so fun. Taking NES-style non-scrolling Zelda and joining it with Bomberman-like puzzles is such a great idea, and it works really well here. Every screen is its own self-contained puzzle, with some really stellar puzzle design. The world design is smartly considered, with world navigation opening up via new skills in a very satisfying way.

This is a pretty short game you're encouraged to replay and speedrun. My first attempt took two hours, but I didn't find all the secret items. I'm planning to go back for another try soon.

Man, what a delight. I only knew a little bit about this going in and kind of figured it would be a normal-ish RPG with a cute art style.

I've rarely seen a game be so absolutely full of ideas. Every single screen manages to surprise me with a new visual gag, a new gameplay idea, a new metatextual gag. The use of pencil-drawn art and real-world art supplies is cute and it keeps coming up with new things to do with them right up until the end.

Can't remember the last game I played that had this many laugh out loud moments. I'm glad I played this with two other people in the room, because it's a perfect game to share "did that just happen?!" reactions with other people.

This game is good?? This game is really good. Wow.

I was expecting this to be funny, but the script is way better-written than I was expecting from the demo. It's well-plotted, the minute-to-minute writing is excellent, and I was so invested in every one of the characters.

Combat is where a lot of indie RPGs fall flat, but SLARPG plays great. Although the battle system is mostly very traditional, the "star point" system that encourges you to play towards a character's strength works very well. The skill design and balance is very well-done; it's a joy figuring out synergies between the different characters' skills. The difficulty level is overall pretty easy for experienced players, but that's not a bad thing and it's easy in a way that still requires players to put in a lot of thought.

I've played a lot of "first RPG Maker" games that were good but not great. This isn't that - this is an exceptional RPG by any metric. Even if you don't like super lesbian animals.

A sweet game that manages to be emotional despite some overly sentimental writing. I'm starting to sense a theme with Odencat's games - it's treading some pretty familiar territory, so players are likely to guess all the twists ahead of time, but it's told well and from the heart.

I found myself wishing the side characters weren't such one-degree stereotypes. The stories of their lives and deaths are meant to be heartwrenching, but it's hard to be very affected by such simple characters. The two main characters are better off because they're given much more time to develop as people. I'm going to be curious to see how Fishing Paradiso handles its side characters; it feels a lot like Odencat are growing from game to game.

Unlike Angel Road, I really appreciated the epilogue this time. It adds quite a bit to the story, and I'd say it's not complete without it.

I didn't think the slow, quiet beauty of Bokunatsu and the goofball Shin-chan humour would work this well, but somehow it all works.

Shin-chan is boistrous and over-the-top silly, but the quiet grounding elements of the daily routine gives everything a lived-in depth. You can really get the sense of these people as a family with genuine interpersonal connections with each other.

I've rarely seen a game this beautiful. I spent minutes just soaking in the beauty of those backgrounds.

Absolutely love this. It's clear how much of an influence Zero Escape was on their storytelling; taking that style of twisting decision tree that turns back in on itself, but applying it to a graphic adventure type game, feels great. Making it about collecting nouns is great, and I genuinely love how many of them are playing on double meanings of the words to make you think twice about what new options you might have unlocked earlier in the game by having collected a noun later on.

The story itself isn't necessarily all that special - it's going for a Stranger Things-style "kids uncovering a mysterious conspiracy" type of thing. But it's told well, and fundamentally it works. It does struggle a bit in the ending, which wraps itself up a little too cleanly right at the moment that something like Zero Escape would be throwing in another few surprise twists. But this also seems to be its creators' first attempt at this kind of game - I'm excited to see where they go from here.